I believe the falling off with this website has a lot to do with the falling off of sports gaming as a whole. As you said, Visual Concepts and Sony San Diego deserve praise for their games, and I would personally add Konami to that list with the past couple PES iterations being very fun. I agree that some people on here go a little overboard with expectations even with the well made sports games like The Show. However, I believe EA deserve every bit of criticism that is thrown at them. EA are obviously the biggest sports gaming developer/publisher, and they have been putting out completely uninspired products for a long while now, solely milking ultimate team modes for as long as possible without any innovation. You can tell that the high-ups at EA don't have any real passion for the sports that they emulate, they only care about the $$$. Sadly, EA basically own American Football, Ice Hockey, and for the most part Soccer and as such have effectively killed off the community of gamers who love those sports. I know many people who have completely stopped playing Madden, NHL and FIFA because they can't take the neglection shown to these games. On the upside, I also know plenty of people who don't even like baseball, yet play The Show because of how well kept and innovative a product it is. I myself have barely any interest in the sport, yet have been playing The Show since 2016 because of how fun the game is. If some new developers who have an actual passion for these sports could start working on some new games and give EA some much needed competition, I think this website would come back to life in a big way.

I don’t disagree with that point @Chiefaho, but I still do think the negativity has tilted to the way overboard territory and has diminished the community as a whole the last few years. It has made’s it’s way into the 2K and Show forum two fold. That is disappointing. Far more than how Madden or NHL plays IMO.